Homeland Security Office Creates ‘Intelligence Spam,’ Insiders Say

Posted on Sep 6, 2011

While the overall intelligence community last year remained in the top 10 places to work in the federal government, surveys from the intelligence and analysis office put it again near the bottom of all government workplaces. The employees said they were not satisfied with their jobs or the organization. They said they would not recommend the office as a good place to work, according to the survey.

Current and former employees said the office is seen merely as a way station for rising stars and a dumping ground for mediocre or inexperienced analysts.

Such internal problems have plagued the office for years, even as pay for its government employees rose. The average salary for analysis and operations employees in 2010 reached $122,000, relatively high for the government, while executive pay hit $185,000. One internal report from 2009 [PDF] described the office as “stuck in its nascency, unable to evolve.”

“Today’s most pressing concerns are the same as those that have been frustrating employees for the past several years,” the report said.

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Homeland security figures show the turnover rate has decreased slightly over the past two years.

“That is a very high percentage,” said John Palguta of the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service, which compiled the rankings. “Even knowing that many of them will not succeed in finding another job, to have over half of the organization’s staff interested in being someplace else within a year is not a good sign.”

Charles E. Allen, who took over the office in 2005, tried to tackle the morale and perception problems. After a distinguished career that lasted nearly 50 years at the CIA, Allen brought gravitas to the office and standing in the intelligence community. Joining him was a cast of former CIA veterans dubbed “Charlie’s Angels,” credited with improving the office’s analytical ability.

In an interview, Allen said the office had only four or five analysts with national intelligence analytical experience when he arrived. He had to rely heavily on contractors, particularly Booz Allen.

“For us to compete within national intelligence and to send out to other intelligence agencies or the Northern Command or the El Paso Intelligence Center – DEA – we had to have quality work,” Allen said. “And I refused to have any (bad product) released.”

In a 2006 assessment, however, the White House Office of Management and Budget gave the Department of Homeland Security’s intelligence outfit failing marks for performance and accountability. One of the performance measures was the number of unfinished intelligence reports, a metric that Allen highlighted in speeches and congressional testimony.

While Allen and his top deputy were considered brilliant analysts, they struggled as managers, current and former officials said. They said Allen wanted to build a mini-CIA, and was slow to embrace state and local efforts.

Allen disputed those criticisms, saying the office during his tenure deployed technology and intelligence officers to aid state and local police around the country. “There was an extraordinary paradigm shift when it came to state and locals,” he said.

The Obama administration has pushed the office to focus more of its attention on state and local law enforcement – turf that traditionally is the FBI’s responsibility. It also appears the administration has diminished the office’s counterterrorism role, former U.S. Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., testified in May [PDF].

Harman and others say that the office should focus more on information developed by other DHS agencies, such as the Transportation Security Administration, Customs and Border Protection, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement – what’s unique to the department.

The office has also tried to implement reforms, including more legal reviews to weed out inappropriate reports. It also has shifted the balance of employees by hiring more government workers. In February, it released a new strategic plan.

Cohen, the Department of Homeland Security’s counterterrorism official, said critics don’t have the most current view of the office. The office still has a robust counterterrorism role, he said. As office leaders steer analysts toward producing reports better suited to state and local police, a dip in morale is expected, he said.

“One of the key roles for (the office) is to be a purveyor of knowledge to inform day-to-day crime-fighting efforts,” he said. “That’s not something that was clearly understood in the early days.”

Allen, the office’s former chief, acknowledges missteps. But he said he also believes that critics are misguided. He said the office is hitting its stride and needs more time.

“We accomplished a great deal,” he said. “I think it’s a five- to 10-year process to build a new culture and get the leadership that is required and the kinds of intelligence officers who are really good.”

But critics said such talk is not new. Even some congressional supporters question the value of the office’s voluminous output.

In an interview, Rep. Mike McCaul, R-Texas, who heads a House Homeland Security oversight subcommittee, said the office improved recently by focusing on state and local partners. But the office must make the information it shares more relevant, he said.

“If no one’s reading the product, what’s it worth?” he said.

Grace Mastalli, a former U.S. deputy assistant attorney general with the Department of Homeland Security, agrees. She said something has to change. There’s too much at stake for the nation’s security, and too great a cost to taxpayers, to do nothing, she said.

“It’s way too much money for way too few results,” she said. “I know everyone has been working hard, but the public record speaks for itself.”

Because the analysis used in the intelligence office is so new and untested before, it is hard to allow others to undergo usability testing for it. It means that it is hard to prove whether it really works or not. If it has been useless all this while in actually detecting and preventing terrorist attacks, then it would have been a huge waste of public funds.

Second main problem: The “right to surveille” goes only one way: The government has the right to sur-veille its citizens; those citizens do not have equal rights to surveille their government. Nor do thay have tha means and access which would enable them to do so. Nor do they particularly want to surveille their government. On the contrary, they have either lost interest or are scared they will be surveilled for surveilling.

Main problem: If it was shut down, 875,000 more
people would be standing in line at unemployment offices, and an unknown number would lose their homes, go on welfare, etc. etc. The entire MIC is more or less one grand boondoggle which neither the citizens nor the officials of a wise democratic government would tolerate.

Andrew Becker/G.W.Schultz,CIR 9/06/2011
Connecting some of the dots you leave
wide open in your article.
(a)Hundreds of millions of dollars are
spent on a poorly defined mission,with reports that
are outdated,irrelevant,vague or are regurgitated.
“Despite being well-documented problems”? Maybe,even
misrepresented?
(b)Since 2003,21,000 reports have been
published and are stripped of sensitive detail.Mind
you this is an Intelligence gathering agency?How many
people were covered by these reports?“There are more
than 300 million people in the United States of
America.The 21,000 reports you refer to would not
justify the hundreds of millions of dollars spent,
unless this is a luxury resort - agency?
(c)Now,it is at up to at least $2 billion
and counting,that has been submitted to Congress.
(d)The office may be cloaked in secrecy
however,this does not eliminate the need for scrutiny
or accountability.Lawmakers and others do not want to
be blamed for shutting it down for fear of another
major attack.Really?With,“No exact accounting for
spending…” What might be the real motives for
keeping these programs on going - forever?
These are but a few of the dots from
your article that indicate,money and a great deal of
power appear to be the real underlying issues here.
What is dishonest,is to claim that
“ordinary people” get caught up searching for
terrorists,after a decade or more of their spying.
The Patriot Act serves as a “signatory”
for the North American Union.The new Declaration of
Dependence of the America’s.
Thanking you for this opportunity -
James M. de Laurier

Homeland Security has been a feeding frenzy for those with good Beltway connections. Remember the report by the WashPost in summer of 2010 that documented the massive scale (e.g., at least 875,000 people with top secret clearances)?

If you want to know how effectively all these agencies and contractors are managed, consider the position of Director of National Intelligence, which on paper sounds like a key position. Since formed in 2005 it has had five Directors and five Principal Deputy Directors! By the time their business card is printed, they’ve been replaced!

Terrorists are most effective by what they threaten to do and not by what they do, because when they succeed in doing something they receive a lot of unpleasant blow back.

This whole farce was started and justified by ignoring that our old intellegence apparatus was effective without this enlarged authority to invade everyones lives. The problem is the politicians and diplomats want to cherry pick the information in order to enhance the relationships that they wish to pursue. In other words the intellgence was there to stop 9/11 but it was ignored. The new mega-intellgence is just another opportunity for obfuscation and confusion.